


The Colors of Easter

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant Demon Possession, Easter, Fluff, Homesickness, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 13:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14166324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: “Alright,” says Marcus, already unwrapping his orange. “You were saying?”Tomas unwraps his own, and smiles in satisfaction when it unfolds into a perfect floret of chocolate orange slices in his hand. He fishes out the little chocolate core and eats it first before speaking. “I want to take you to England.”-In which Easter is just around the corner, and Marcus is missing home.





	The Colors of Easter

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Easter, to all my friends and fellow Exorcist fans. I hope you enjoy.

**I.**

The moon is low in the sky, and its reflection is bright on the dark blue surface of the lake. Tomas rolls up the legs of his pants up to his knees and sits down on the edge of the dock, sighing at the feeling of cool water easing the ache in his feet.

The stars are coming out overhead; this far from the city, there is no smoke, no pollution. The evening is so quiet that Tomas almost imagines he can hear the fish swimming under the surface. Behind him he hears the sound of crunching gravel, and then the quiet creaking of footsteps on the dock’s worn-out planks. A white plastic grocery bag nudges his shoulder, the crinkling loud and artificial in his ear. “Hey,” says Marcus, “budge up.”

Tomas scoots aside and lets Marcus plop down next to him, dropping the grocery bag between them and already tugging off his shoes. Tomas eyes the bag in bemused surprise. “What are those for?”

“The corner shop had them,” Marcus says, as he dips his legs into the water. “Thought it’d be a bit of a treat.”

Tomas looks at Marcus’ legs, and then his own. Sometimes he gets so caught up in the similarities between himself and his partner that he forgets their differences. Marcus’ legs are long and pale; the legs of a dancer, with ash-blond hair so thin it might as well be invisible. Tomas’ legs are shorter, more muscular, with caramel skin and thick, dark hair.

He doesn’t think about these things when he looks at Marcus. He doesn’t see their differences. Maybe he should.

Marcus digs his hand into the bag and pulls out a package of sugar wafers, which he starts wrestling open. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” he says, as he pulls out three of them and offers them to Tomas.

Tomas takes them. “Yes?”

They’re thin, rectangular bits of waffle, with cream in between them. These ones are the white ones, the best kind, and Tomas savors the taste as he bites into one. He feels it melt in his mouth immediately, almost the way a communion wafer does. They are not expensive. They taste expensive.

“Do you miss home?” Marcus asks.

Tomas doesn’t have to think about it. “Yes,” he says, talking through another mouthful of sugar wafer. “Yes, I do. But I don’t regret leaving it though.”

He looks over at Marcus, who has peeled one of the wafers in half and is eating it layer by layer, like a common criminal.

“Do you ever miss your home?” Tomas asks.

Marcus looks out over the water.

 

**II.**

It seems a cruel trick of fate that they should find themselves in New Orleans on this night of all nights of the year, when Marcus is feeling too dismal and self-reflective to enjoy it. The city is a cacophony of pleasure, a whirling dervish of color and light. The traffic lights reflect springtime green off the puddles of rainwater by the curb, and the hanging plants on the windowsills above the outdoor cafe spill over like waterfalls and drip constellations of dew unto the cafe tables below. One of the them splashes his Bible, smudging the graphite, and Marcus smiles ruefully as he thinks how best to work this little accident into his drawing.

He leans back in his chair, the black wire legs scraping on the pavement beneath him, and admires his latest handiwork. This one is simple; a hand, holding a laurel. For the past ten minutes Marcus has been working to better define the veins, and the way the bones rest bird-like and small under the skin of the wrist. The laurel has twenty curling leaves, and is splayed attractively across Luke 24: 4-7.

_And it came to pass, as they stood there in confusion, behold, two men appeared before them in extraordinary garments, and they feared for their lives, bowing their faces to the earth. Then the two said to them: Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and rise again on the third day._

“I see you there,” says Tomas fondly. “Your mind is a thousand miles away, but I see you.”

Marcus looks up just as Tomas sits down opposite him, his skin shining with sweat and his hair mussed and cowlicked. He’s smiling like a lovesick fool, and begins to pat down his pockets, finally coming up with a handful of chocolate coins which he spills across the center of the table. “You should join me,” he says, picking one and peeling it open, as easy as shelling a macadamia nut. “Everyone is celebrating. At least try some absinthe for me, you are the only one between us who can drink without remorse.”

Marcus had tasted that green liquor only once before, and it had made his head spin, and his legs weak at the knees. He’d felt like he was dying. Looking at Tomas now, with his shirt half-open and his sweat shining on his collarbones, he feels much the same.

Marcus shakes his head with a rueful smile. “Nah,” he says. “I’m pensive today.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“. . . No, not today.”

Tomas doesn’t press the issue. He skims his fingertips across Marcus’ elbow- _I’m here, if you need me-_ before returning his attention to the unwrapping of chocolate coins.

Out in the night, Marcus can hear music- there is always music in New Orleans- and laughter. In this, a quiet neighborhood, the festivities on the more crowded streets have bubbled over and touched every ear. “We should come back sometime,” he says. “I’d like to give absinthe another go.”

 

**III.**

Sometimes, when the hour is late and even the sound of Marcus breathing in the next bed can’t lull Tomas to sleep, Tomas thinks of home.

 _You can’t go home again,_ as Thomas Wolfe had said. That book had been published posthumously, scrambled together last-minute by his editor. _You can’t go home again._ The memory of home was fresh enough in Tomas’ mind that the ache of being apart from it touched him only rarely. He dared not think of how it would feel a year from now, or two. He can barely think of what might happen a day from now without his heart quailing in nervous agitation.

Easter is creeping up on him like a predator in the long grass. Easter had been a happy, festive time back at home; the end of Lent was drawing near, and the celebration of Christ’s resurrection was at hand. Tomas remembers the long Saturday afternoons the day before with particular fondness. He would show up outside Olivia’s apartment door, laden with shopping bags and stamping the rainwater off his running shoes, and she would open the door and kiss him and tell him he was late, _again._

St. Anthony’s held fundraisers every Easter. Nothing extravagant, not in that neighborhood, but it was important to Tomas that this feel like an event, something to bring the people together and give them a good time. So the day before the party, he, Olivia, and Luis would squash themselves into Olivia’s tiny kitchen- with the tacky 70’s wallpaper and the clunky yellow kitchen appliances- and bake anything they could think of. Carrot cupcakes. Peanut butter brownies. Lemon squares. They’d cook until the whole apartment smelled like sugar.

Luis liked the Peep crafts best of all, so Tomas always took care to bring a half a dozen boxes of yellow Peeps with him, to make whatever little scene was going to be the centerpiece of this year’s dessert table. Usually they were simple: graham crackers glued together with icing, Peeps poised on little castle walls with toothpicks stabbed into them for swords. They rarely reenacted scenes from the Bible, as Olivia deemed them perhaps too violent for Peeps, but on one occasion they had given the Peeps little frosted wings and halos, which Olivia agreed made them almost too cute to eat.

Afterwards, when the lemon squares were cooling on their wire racks in the kitchen and Luis had been gently shepherded off to bed, Olivia and Tomas would stay up and talk. They would sit in the living room over a pair of iced teas and talk about Mom and Dad, or laugh about Olivia’s ex, and Tomas always insisted that he would _not_ crash on Olivia’s couch for the night, that tomorrow was a big day and he needed to be at his best. In the morning, sure enough, he would get up before the sun and rush back to his apartment to ready himself for the 8:00 Easter service.

Tomas only dwells on these memories when it’s late, and he’s feeling especially self-pitying. A bishop had once told him that self-pity was vanity undiluted. Egotism in its purest form. He closes his eyes, and can’t help but agree with him.

But he misses the taste of Peeps.

 

**IV.**

The riotous din of an exorcism going poorly seems out of place in this young man’s childhood bedroom. The science fair posters tear themselves into pieces as they struggle against the scarlet pushpins anchoring them to the wall. The bookshelf, long since toppled, rattles ominously of its own accord as it crushes innumerable floppy paperbacks beneath it. Above Marcus’ head, the demon wearing the skin of a college student lies flat on its back as though crucified on the stucco ceiling. Red paint falls in flakes along with blackened bits of scabrous skin. The demon drools scarlet blood onto Marcus’ shoulder as he and Tomas shriek litanies up at its leering face, and only when Tomas roars an admonition for it to _come back down in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord_ does it finally drop like a stone onto the worn-out carpet.

The demon rolls onto its back and laughs. **Fuck you, father of adulterers!** it gurgles through a mouthful of blood. **Fuck you, father of murderers! Hurl me down to Hell and I will drag you with me- I’ll show you misery! An eternity sodomized by the Devil’s dogs, an eternity burning in the fiery pit! You ugly blood mammals, is this what your God wanted? Is this the place He has made for you in His house?**

The boy had come home from spring break not two weeks before, to stay with his parents, and had moved into his childhood bedroom. Now his parents sit downstairs, holding each other in shell-shocked, twitching silence, as Marcus and Tomas kneel on the wrists of their son to keep him still and fill his ears with prayers until the animal inside him heels. The demon kicks and stamps and spits, making the furniture fly and the shelves rattle. One of them collapses outright, spilling old spelling trophies and fencing medals. The half-empty bag of stale red jellybeans the boy’d forgotten on the bedside table spill over and rattle across the floor in every direction. Marcus’ boots scramble for traction on them as he holds the boy down, cupping his face in his hands and marking his forehead with a cross of oil. “You are loved,” he whispers desperately, into the unseeing eyes of someone’s child. “You are a son of God, a prince. You are so loved, so valued. I love you, your mother loves you, your father loves you . . .”

 **What would you know about a father's love, old man?** The demon spits a gob of red phlegm onto Marcus’ cheek. **You’re an accident. Unwanted. Spat out into an uncaring universe because your father liked a warm cunt after a few beers.**

Marcus sees Tomas’ hand blur out of the corner of his eye, and grabs his wrist before he bloodies the boy’s nose. Tomas gives him a look, his breathing heavy, his eyes clouded with anger. _It’s okay,_ Marcus mouths to him silently, and Tomas slowly lowers his hand.

“Ashes on the earth,” Marcus whispers, returning his to the rictus of agony on the boy’s face. “Fallen angel. _You are loved.”_

**You are nothing! You wander the earth like John the Baptist, without home or hearth!**

_“You are loved.”_

**You’re a boogeyman, oh-so-mighty-Marcus. A cautionary tale your mum’s old neighbors tell their kids when they don’t eat their greens.**

_“You are loved.”_

**You are nothing.**

_“You are loved, you are loved, you are loved . . .”_

 

**V.**

Tomas breathes deeply of the early evening air, and silently thanks God that Marcus is beside him.

They’re sitting on the front steps of a clean-cut, no-nonsense church in the midwest, watching the sun go down over the gray-tiled rooftops. It bathes the church and surrounding street in a dreamy orange glow. Behind the closed door behind them, there’s a church social going on. Despite being the centerpieces of the party, no one has yet noticed their absence. They can hear the merry chatter of polite conversation muffled by the walls behind them.

It was Tomas who had left first; he’d begun to feel stifled under that roof. Although the social was ostensibly to celebrate them, that many moon-white faces and less-than-sincere smiles when he spoke had made his collar feel rather tight, and he had retired to the front steps to take in a little of the evening air. Marcus, too busy charming the elderly ladies at the punch bowl with anecdotes about the last church social he’d attended, failed to notice for a good ten minutes.

When Tomas heard the door creak open behind him he’d started to his feet, believing someone had noticed his absence and intended to corral him back inside, but it was only Marcus. He sat down again in relief, and Marcus sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and said nothing. Tomas was grateful for the silence, and as they sat together and watched the sun go down, he thought to himself, _just like this, forever._

Marcus slips his hand into his pocket, and pulls out a pair of chocolate oranges, still in their crinkly golden wrappers. _“Te robé esto para ti, hermano,”_ he says solemnly. _“En gran riesgo para mi vida.”_

 _“Gracias,”_ says Tomas, with a small smile. He accepts one of the oranges and rolls it back and forth between his hands. “I’ve been thinking . . .”

“Hold on,” says Marcus.

Tomas nods in acquiescence, because yes, this is the more pressing issue. Marcus scoots a little to the left, so they have room to maneuver, and as one they bring down their oranges with a mighty _crack_ against the white wooden boards of the steps.

“Alright,” says Marcus, already unwrapping his orange. “You were saying?”

Tomas unwraps his own, and smiles in satisfaction when it unfolds into a perfect floret of chocolate orange slices in his hand. He fishes out the little chocolate core and eats it first before speaking. “I want to take you to England.”

Marcus, already through with a quarter of the orange, looks at him incredulously. “Home. You want to take me home.”

“Yes,” says Tomas. “I do.”

“We can’t afford to go dancing off to England.”

“We can’t afford to drive every which way across America either, and yet God in His goodness has provided us the money to do so. So why should we not go dancing off to England, as you say?”

“That’s different,” Marcus says weakly. He looks down at the chocolate orange in his hand, split open and fanning in every direction like a child’s drawing of a sun. “We don’t _need_ a trip to England to do our jobs. We can’t expect Him to provide the money for us to just do whatever we damn well please.”

“But He might.”

“Yeah, but He won’t.”

“But He _might.”_

“It’s dangerous, then.”

“Dangerous how?” Tomas says desperately. “You know you have no family there. If I go home, I endanger my sister, and my nephew. I know this, I understand this. If you go home, you endanger no one.”

Marcus picks absent-mindedly at the golden tinfoil wrapper. “. . . I hated my home,” he says finally, without much conviction.

“You’re still allowed to miss it,” says Tomas.

Slowly, as though only just coming to the realization himself, Marcus nods.

 

**VI.**

Their room is quiet and dim in the failing light of dusk. Marcus lays his hand flat against the cold windowpane and looks over the moors, and the gathering fog collecting under the lavender sky. There are bats nesting in the eaves of this inn, or so he suspects; he can hear them rustling in the walls and ceiling.

Below him, through the cracks in the floorboards, he can hear the piano being played slowly and laboriously for the other guests downstairs. The innkeeper has three daughters, all of whom play the piano. An audience is good for them, he says. It’s not good for the audience.

Marcus smiles at the thought, and Tomas, who has been peeling the blankets off the bed, catches sight of his smile and grins in return. “What are you thinking of?”

“England.”

“Does it feel good, being back?”

Marcus rolls his shoulders lazily, and doesn’t take his eyes off the moor. The sky above has gone from pale lavender to a dark, violent violet. The fog is thick enough to cut with a knife. Marcus is frankly astounded that it’s not raining; this is the season for it, after all. In England, it is always the season for rain.

They’d taken one room, as was their custom, though this one had the disadvantage of having only one bed. Once they’d set their bags down and dropped their shoes, Tomas had taken a shower and they had argued for twenty minutes on either side of the shower curtain about which one of them would get the mattress. A verdict had been reached only after great difficulty: Tomas would stop martyring himself and take the bed, and Marcus would shut his mouth and take the blankets, and that was that.

Tomas leaves the blankets, three of them, piled up in a crumpled heap in the armchair squeezed between the window and the lamp. Marcus sets about arranging them, trying to fold them and fluff them into a kind of nest, and looks bewildered when Tomas laughs at him, his hand on his face and his eyes sparkling with mirth.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he laughs, his hand cupped over his mouth. “It’s only that now I’m expecting you to climb up there and turn around three times before laying down.”

Tomas sits down on the edge of his now-vacant bed. He takes the basket off the bedside table and nestles it in his lap before pulling off the little purple cloth. “Go on then,” says Marcus, finally sitting down in his chair and getting situated amongst the blankets. “What’s in it?”

Tomas gives him a mockingly stern look. The concept of a hotel- or an inn, in this case- that gave you free things just for staying there was an entirely new one to Marcus, no matter how Tomas insisted that he not get his hopes up.

“Alright, alright,” says Tomas, waving a hand. “There’s water . . .” He puts the bottle down on the bedside table with a satisfying _thunk._ “There’s shampoo . . . the little lavender-scented ones . . . and there’s a business card . . . caramel chews . . .”

Marcus perks up in his seat. “Caramel chews?”

Tomas obligingly tosses them to him, one at a time, and Marcus catches them all in one hand. He chews on them blissfully while Tomas looks at the business card, enjoying the unfamiliar sweetness of caramel on his tongue.

“From now on,” he says with his mouth full, “we only stay at hotels with complimentary gift baskets.”

“Whatever you like,” Tomas says with a sad smile. He leaves the empty basket on the bedside table and walks over to look out the window, craning his neck to catch a view of the moon behind the clouds. “The sky is beautiful, here,” he says.

“No more beautiful than in America.”

Tomas shrugs, but doesn’t look away from the moon.

 

**VII.**

“We shouldn’t be out here,” Tomas whispers. “I can’t see a thing.”

“Please,” says Marcus, “it has to be at night,” and Tomas, who has never yet been able to resist that voice, follows Marcus into the dark.

They’ve taken the old walking trail out from the town- Marcus knows the way even now, and nearly laughs when he scuffs his boots on the rocky gravel. The forest looms over the rocky field and the dense clusters of brush; black and imposing in the moonlight, rising against the inky sky. The moon is out again tonight, though it’s waning. Their flashlights illuminate their footsteps like patchy white spotlights.

Tomas grips the strap of his bag tighter as he tilts his head upwards, mouth slightly open as he views the Milky Way in all its splendor. The sky was never so clear in Chicago. It baffles him, sometimes, to think that Marcus and he had grown up under the watchful eye of the same moon.

He hopes they don’t get lost out here.

Venturing into the forest is the height of foolishness at this late hour, but Tomas has more faith in Marcus than is perhaps healthy for him. Marcus will steer him right, as he has done in the past, and will do again.

Marcus doesn’t lead him far into the forest.

They stop, just barely on the interior of the tree line, where the gravelly walking trail gives way to soft, spongey pine needles and chunky, moss-covered stones. Tomas can’t see Marcus’ face- his back is to him. He hopes he’s smiling.

“This is it,” Marcus says breathlessly. “Charnwood Forest.”

“I can’t help but think,” Tomas chides gently, “that it would be even more beautiful in the sunlight.”

“No,” says Marcus. “There’s something I want to show you.”

They stand together in the darkness, not talking. The sound of Marcus’ breath is almost as loud in Tomas’ ears as his own heartbeat.

“Any minute,” Marcus says in a hushed whisper, looking up at the stars, and then back down at the forest floor. “Any minute now.”

Tomas plays his flashlight across the forest floor, catching glimpses of dark flowers and moonlit vegetation. A nighttime forest, blooming in high spring. Mosquitos buzz in his ear and land on his skin, waiting to be slapped into black smears on his arm. Something rustles quietly on the forest floor, and Tomas, too used to demons, trains the beam of his flashlight on it in suspicion. It’s only a rabbit, soft-nosed and small, and it shrinks away from his light to conceal itself in the comfort of the brush.

“There,” says Marcus. “Turn off your light.”

Tomas does, without hesitation. It’s then that he sees the fireflies.

“They’re still here,” Marcus whispers, awe-struck. He sits down heavily on the forest floor, cross-legged, and watches the fireflies creep from the trees and take flight from the mossy rocks. They’re slow, lazy things, moving through the air with all the syrupy brightness of burning cinders. “Look at them.”

Tomas, for a moment, forgets to look. Marcus’ face has lit up, brighter than any firefly. Tomas goes to sit next to him and Marcus’ hand immediately jumps to his knee, then his shoulder, his thumb affectionately brushing against Tomas’ neck.

“I used to talk to these, when I was a kid,” Marcus says. His hand doesn’t leave Tomas’ shoulder. “I used to think of them as people.”

Tomas opens his bag and fumbles with the contents before finding what he’s looking for. He offers one to Marcus, who laughs when he sees them. “These are my favorites,” Tomas says. “I brought some for us.”

Marcus smiles wider, and wipes his eyes, his nose. “Thank you,” he says, taking one of the chocolate eggs and rolling it back and forth between his hands. One of the fireflies lands on the back of his hand, it’s little black body flickering on and off in the darkness. Marcus holds still until it takes off, and Tomas’ gaze follows its path up, up, up into the trees.

“I love these,” Marcus says fondly, unwrapping the little chocolate egg and cracking it open on the back of his wrist. It splits down the middle, already oozing creamy white syrup.

Tomas, meanwhile, has already bit the top off the egg. He dips his tongue in and lets his eyes fall half-closed, enjoying the taste while he watches the fireflies drift and glow around them. He loves these more than any other sweet. He can’t remember the last time he felt so peaceful, so contented. An unfamiliar forest at night ought to be a place of danger to him, but it’s impossible to feel fear. Not when Marcus’ feet know these walking trails so well.

He tilts his head back to drink the cream out of the center, intent on licking out every drop without breaking the fragile chocolate shell. When he finally finishes, he looks back at Marcus just in time to see him quickly look away, his eyes back on the fireflies dancing in the air around them.

“You’re eating it wrong,” Tomas says fondly, nodding at the half-eaten egg in Marcus’ hand.

“Evidently,” Marcus says in a strained voice. Then he leans to the side abruptly, thumps his shoulder against Tomas’ shoulder. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“It’s beautiful,” says Tomas. “Thank you for bringing _me_ here.”

They sit together on the forest floor, watching the fireflies until the early hours of the morning. Marcus fills Tomas’ head with stories, and Tomas listens to every one.

They only leave when they’ve run out of chocolate.


End file.
